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https://torah.org/learning/reflections-classes-reflection-15/

By Rabbi Raymond Beyda | Series: | Level:

Powerful desires were instilled in the human being in order to perpetuate the species. Hunger drives a person to eat, which in turn provides the nutrients needed to fuel the body. The strong attraction for the opposite gender promotes behavior that yields offspring. Even the desire to accumulate wealth – greed – was created so that people would compete and create products and services to improve the human condition.

It is not easy to control an urge. Heavenly wisdom also provided brakes to limit the speed of the human engine – one’s intellect. The human intellect can rule over desire and emotion. Common sense or sometimes deep analysis can cause a person to pause and think: “Is this really what is best?” before one commits a major faux pas by submitting to an unhealthy dose of desire.

Last week while driving through a business district in heavy traffic I passed the time by reading the various signs and awnings that advertised and informed each establishment’s wares. One caught my eye. “Mind Body Balance Spa” was the name over the door of an unassuming storefront. I did not stop and I did not get a chance to enter and investigate what exactly goes on in that place but it did start my mind buzzing.

“Isn’t that what life is all about? Finding the right balance between desire and intellect — balancing the wants and needs of the body with the high ideals of the heavenly soul?”

Just like an automobile is designed with adequate breaks a person is provided with good sense. Just like the driver who does not choose to step on the break pedal will head into a crash so too a person who does not use his or her brain will end up in disaster. Human judgment is fallible and mistakes do occur but the biggest mistake of all is not to use the tools given to us to control the course of our lives. Mind body balance is the path to happiness and use of the mind to control the body is the road to achievement of the elusive goal.

DID YOU KNOW THAT

If a person has some doubt as to whether or not he or she has said a blessing correctly one does not say the blessing again [except in the case of Bircat Ha Mazon ­ which is biblical in nature and must be repeated].

If someone has a doubt as to whether or not he or she has fulfilled a Misvah D’Oraita ­a commandment mandated in the Torah—one must repeat the performance of the Misvah, however, even if the Misvah is accompanied by a berakha—blessing—the blessing is not said when the Misvah is repeated.

If a person doesn’t remember if he or she has said the correct blessing on a food, one may continue eating but is to recite the blessing just in order to be “safe”.

[Source, Bircat Hashem, Chap 2, 1,2].

CONSIDER THIS FOR A MINUTE

If one has wisdom one can distinguish anything.

Berakhot 5:2 – Talmud Yerushalmi


Text Copyright &copy 2003 Rabbi Raymond Beyda and Project Genesis, Inc.